Replies

I am hitting the road shortly, but I wanted simply to say that this is another thread that connects to the proselytization of Protestants. In light of that, it necessary again to state that the biblical basis of Mariology is extremely weak in terms of the Assumption of Mary and non-existent in terms of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.

Sir, I understand your objections and as you might expect, I have heard them all before. I have studied this inside and outside the Church.

As you also know for sure, I don't feel that is necessary for me to justify every Catholic belief from a Bible verse, not only because I don't see Holy Writ as a mere repository of propositional truth, but also because as a Catholic, I reject--after careful, years of long analysis that took me for a while outside of the Church--the tenet of sola scriptura which btw, it's also unscriptural.

The tenor of the article is what we have always said, though one will be unable to find a biblical verse directly stating a mariological truth, neither will you find one directly undermining one. Mariological truths are Christological ones, deny one, and you undermine the other. The Fathers understood this and it is on their insight and on their knowledge of the received Tradition upon which the Church builds her understanding of the Blessed Virgin.

I also take a dim view to your objection of proselytizing protestants, since many Protestants do not extend a similar courtesy to Catholics. If the field is to be level, Protestants have a right to hear what Catholics have to say when it comes Apostolic Christian truth.

Finally, let me state that in the Communion of Saints there are no Christians separated by the mere accident of physical death. That's what enable us to belong to the same prayer team whether here, or in heaven. That's what the veneration of Mary and all the saints really means.

I ask for your prayers and also ask the Lord to richly bless you, by the prayerful intercession of his Most Holy Mother who, in the Lord, is present to each and everyone of us.

-Theo

Yeah, I should probably write another reply to that other thread sometime soon--somehow it just didn't seem an appropriate debate to have on Christmas weekend.

Okay then, before I deal with the specifics of the article, let's have a little quiz: What is wrong with the following picture?

Answer:

I am the LORD your God, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make to yourselves any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them. For I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons to the third and fourth generation of those that hate me, and showing mercy to thousands of those that love Me and keep My commandments.
--Exodus 20:2-6

Now, in light of the above commandment and the very regular Catholic practice of bowing down to graven images the Biblical Christian is altogether justified and right to break fellowship with the Roman Catholic institution. The Catholic defense that "We're not really worshipping the statue or the saint, but the God behind the saint" is irrelevant. When Israel sinned by making the golden calf, it didn't matter that they were still worshipping the God who had led them out of Egypt (in Exo. 32:4-55, after making the calf, Aaron says, "These are your gods (Heb. Eloheyk, lit. 'Here is your God,' as the term "God" is nearly a plural Hebrew word when speaking of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt . . . Tomorrow is a feast to YHVH," thus proving that the idolatry was meant to honor God. God still wasn't very pleased with Israel, was He?

God did not spend two millennia beating the idea that bowing to graven images is okay out of Israel just to reinstitute the pagan practice after the coming of the Messiah.

Now, to deal with the specifics of the article:

. . . one of the reactions has been, historically, to exile the Mother of Jesus from salvation history.

On the contrary, we are quite cognizant of Miryam's (Mary's) place in salvation history: She was blessed above all women and given the honor of giving birth to the Messiah, the Incarnation of God Himself.

However, that does not make her Co-Redemtrix, for "Our Redeemer, YHVH-Tzva'ot (the LORD of Hosts) is His name, the Holy One of Israel. . . For my sake, for My sake I will do it; for why should My name be defiled? And I will not give My glory to another" (Isa. 47:4, 48:11).

Nor does this make her a mediator between God (whose person includes the Messiah) and Man, "For God is one, and there is one Mediator between God and man, the Man Messiah Yeshua . . ." (I Ti. 2:5).

Nor does it make her sinless (the Immaculate Conception), for Miryam herself called God her Savior (Luke 1:47), and "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23).

Miryam was the humblest of God's servants, and it would be a stab to her heart to know half of what Catholics attribute to her or call upon her to do for them.

It is telling that in the author's response to the plain meaning of 1 Ti. 2:5 that he does not rely upon Scripture to build his case, nor even on specific citations from the earliest Church fathers, but on a pair of encyclicals written in the last quarter-century:

In other words, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ does not extinguish the intercessory communion of human beings before God.

There is a vast difference between the Messiah's mediatorship and intercessory prayer. The word "mediator" in 1 Timothy is mesites, which means, to quote Thayer's Lexicon, "one who intervenes between two, either in order to make or restore peace and friendship, or to form a compact, or for ratifying a covenant." When I pray for a friend, I do not do so as a go-between as if I had the position to turn away God's anger for their sins; rather, I can at best pray that God will continue to pursue them so that they might repent of their sins and find forgiveness in the Messiah Yeshua, Christ Jesus.

This is a far cry from what the Catholic seeks in Mary (P-Marlowe will excuse me, I trust, for ripping off some of his research):

Consider the following book, Novena Prayers in Honor of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, with the Catholic Imprimatur (and nihil obstat) on it which guarantees that there is nothing heretical in it.
We have no greater help,
no greater hope than you,
O Most Pure Virgin; help us, then,
for we hope in you, we glory in you,
we are your servants.
Do not disappoint us.
(Novena Prayers in Honor of Our Mother of Perpetual Help (Uniontown, Pa.: Sisters of St. Basil, 1968), p. 16)
In the same devotional book Mary’s devotees pray:
Come to my aid, dearest Mother, for I recommend myself to thee. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee I entrust my soul. Count me among thy most devoted servants; take me under thy protection, and it is enough for me. For, if thou protect me, dear Mother, I fear nothing: not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of them; nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell together; not even from Jesus, my judge, because by one prayer from thee, He will be appeased.
(Ibid., p. 19)
Numerous examples of this kind of Mary worship can be found in Alphonsus de Liguori’s famous book, The Glories of Mary ( a.d. 1750), which is published in over 800 editions! A few examples will suffice:
Shall we scruple to ask her to save us, when “the way of salvation is open to none otherwise than through Mary.”
“Many things,” says Nicephorus, “are asked from God, and are not granted: they are asked from Mary, and are obtained.”
At the commands of Mary all obey—even God” [!!!]
(Alphonsus de Liguori, The Glories of Mary, ed. Eugene Grimm (Brooklyn: Redemptionist Fathers, 1931), pp. 169, 180, 137)

And from this Catholic website:

St. Anselm, to increase our confidence, says this: "When we pray to the Mother of God we are heard more quickly than when we call directly on the name of Jesus --- for her Son is not only our Lord but our Judge. But when we call on the name of His Mother, though our own merits will not insure an answer, yet her merits intercede for us and we are answered." . . .
St. John Damascene used to say: "As long as I keep alive my hope in thee, O Mother of God, I shall be safe. I will fight and overcome enemies with this one shield --- thy protection and thy all-powerful help." . . .
Our Blessed Lady revealed to St. Bridget that the devil flies from even the most abandoned sinners --- from those farthest from God and fully possessed by the devil, if only they invoke her most powerful name with a true purpose of amendment. But our Blessed Lady added at the same time that, if such persons do not amend and wash away their sins in sorrow, the devils return and begin again to possess them.

Clearly, the devotion expressed by many Catholics towards Mary goes well beyond the devotion that any human being other than the Messiah should receive--and even Yeshua taught us to pray, not to Himself, but to His Father in His Name (cf. The Lord's Prayer). Indeed, He Himself said, "At that day you will ask in My name; and I do not say to you that I will pray to the Father for you, for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came out from God" John 16:26-27). He is not here contradicting His earlier statement that He would pray for His disciples (14:16), but making the point that they didn't just have Him as a go-between--they have and we have direct access to God the Father's throne in Yeshua's Name, and He loves us dearly because we have put our faith in Yeshua, who paid the full price for our sins.

If we participate, as Paul did, then certainly the one whom the ecumenical Council of Ephesus termed the "Mother of God" or "God-bearer" in 431 A.D. does also.

"God-bearer" is possibly an appropriate title (depending on the connotation one derives from it); "Mother of God" is certainly not. By calling Mary the "Mother of God" we put God under her authority. Indeed, many Catholics follow the logic of the title exactly to its full conclusion, saying that they go to Mary because no son would reject the request of his mother and surely Christ is not exception! But on the contrary, God is not Mary's son, He is her Father. She gave birth to His physical incarnation (i.e., the flesh, bone, and blood, not the mind or Spirit), but, to paraphrase Yochanan the Immerser, aka John the Baptist, He who came after her is before her, for He preceded her.

Of course, the author of this article oversimplifies: There is far more than just the issue of Mariology separating Protestants and Catholics. Mary happens to be one of the most emotional issues, but the core issue is the RCC's attempt to both add to and take away from the Word of God by it's traditions. Yeshua wasn't pleased when the Pharisees did that (Mark 7); what makes you think He's any more pleased by the annuling of God's Word by the Magisterium?